WASHINGTON – A Lufkin, Texas, woman was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Marcia Crone to 180 months in prison for her role in a double homicide that took place in Nacogdoches, Texas, in August 2007, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney John M. Bales for the Eastern District of Texas.
April Flanagan, 31, pleaded guilty on Nov. 29,
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Raul Castro, the Mendota teenager accused of raping and killing a 4-year-old boy, could learn his fate this morning.
Because Castro waived his right to a jury trial, Fresno County Superior Court Judge Jonathan Conklin will decide the verdict in a crime that shocked Mendota residents and shattered two families.
Attorneys concluded their closing arguments Thursday morning.
Castro, 15, is charged with kidnapping, raping and murdering Alex Mercado. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Castro confessed to the crime, but the defense has portrayed him as a mentally ill boy who has suffered neglect and physical and sexual abuse, which ultimately drove him to kill.
WASHINGTON – Rogelio Hackett Jr., 26, of Lithonia, Ga., pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga in Alexandria, Va., to trafficking in counterfeit credit cards and aggravated identity theft, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride for the Eastern District of Virginia.
According to court documents, U.S. Secret Service special agents executing a search warrant in 2009 at Hackett’s home found more than 675,000 stolen credit card numbers and related information in his computers and email accounts. Ha
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Testimony will begin Monday in the trial of a Mendota teen who is accused of killing a 4-year-old neighbor in October 2009.
Raul Castro, 15, is charged with the murder of Alex Mercado, whose body was discovered in a clothes dryer in Castro’s apartment on Halloween.
Testimony will begin at 9 a.m. in Judge Jonathan Conklin’s courtroom, said Barbara O’Neill, Castro’s attorney.
During preliminary motions this morning, Conklin decided that Castro does not have to be shackled and witnesses can be in the courtroom, O’Neill said.
Castro’s fate rests with Conklin after the teenager waived his right to a jury trial earlier this month. The trial is expected to last three to five days, O’Neill said.
Carla Jimenez did more than just encourage her 12-year-old daughter to fight a 13-year-old girl in a brawl posted on YouTube.
She also cursed a person who tried to stop it.
She kicked the 13-year-old in the back.
And earlier in the day, she had created a disturbance at Scandinavian Middle School when she confronted an assistant principal there about what she perceived as bullying her daughter had suffered, a prosecutor said Tuesday in opening remarks of Jimenez’s criminal trial in Fresno County Superior Court.
The picture of Jimenez that prosecutor Susan Rand painted as trial opened was in stark contrast with how Jimenez had portrayed herself a day earlier, when she spoke to reporters for the first time about a case that has drawn widespread attention.
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